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core-olas-staking.md

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title Olas staking
status Implemented
author Mariapia Moscatiello (@mariapiamo)
shortDescription Olas Staking Mechanism
discussions https://discord.com/channels/899649805582737479/1121019872839729152
created 2024-03-06
updated (*optional) 2026-05-22

Simple Summary

Designed to empower diverse users, including individuals, groups, companies, and DAOs, Olas staking mechanism enables the creation of autonomous agent economies. By allowing the definition of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in staking programs, Olas Staking facilitates the bootstrapping of new economies and sustains existing ones. By incorporating this mechanism into the Olas Protocol, the proposal envisions a self-sustaining cycle of economic activities, positioning Olas as a crucial infrastructure in the crypto landscape.

Abstract

We introduce Olas Staking, a decentralized mechanism designed for integration into the Olas protocol, fortifying the Olas ecosystem. This innovative mechanism empowers users to define and implement KPIs within staking programs, actively contributing to the bootstrapping and sustainability of autonomous agent economies. The outlined specifications mention the smart contracts that facilitate the implementation of the Olas Staking Mechanism and allow Olas DAO to regulate and allocate OLAS emissions, fostering staking programs across diverse blockchains. To exemplify its adaptability, a specific use case is presented: Olas Predict—an agent-based economy featuring AI agents dedicated to serving prediction markets for a diverse array of future events.

Motivation

The Olas Staking Mechanism serves as a pivotal element in the Olas ecosystem, facilitating the creation and sustainability of autonomous (AI) agent economies.

Users, including individuals, groups, companies, or DAOs, can define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) tailored to desired actions within the ecosystem. The staking mechanism allows the entity to articulate its goals via KPIs in smart contracts. These smart contracts can then be used to define staking programs that reward agents actively working towards said KPIs. Anyone can propose diverse staking programs, then Olas DAO members can direct OLAS token emissions to desirable programs via a voting-weight mechanism utilizing veOLAS [^1]. OLAS emissions allow to bootstrap existing or entirely new autonomous services. Over time, some services will become financially sustainable, and create some returns for the DAO that can be reinvested to fund further bootstrapping efforts. As a result, a powerful flywheel initiates, giving rise to an ever-growing number of productive agents and autonomous economies.

Detailed information on how Olas Olas Staking strengthens the Olas ecosystem can be found in sections “Executive summary”, “Overview”, and “The Olas ecosystem and inaugural agent economy: Olas Predict” of the Olas Staking & Proof of Active Agent whitepaper

Inaugural agent economy: Olas Predict

Olas Predict serves as an illustrative example of an agent-based economy, comprising AI agents serving prediction markets for a wide range of future events. Specifically, Olas Predict consists of three interconnected services, Market Maker, Trader, and Mech. Together, they create AI-based prediction markets for arbitrary future events, enabling anyone to operate an agent that trades in prediction markets on behalf of humans.

To have more information on Olas predict KPIs and how the staking mechanism can be applied to the Trader and the Market Creator services see sections “The Olas ecosystem and inaugural agent economy: Olas Predict” and “Case study: a staking model for Olas Predic” of the Olas Staking & Proof of Active Agent whitepaper.

Specification

The smart contracts that facilitate the implementation of the Olas Staking Mechanism and allow Olas DAO to regulate and allocate OLAS emissions comprise the following: Staking contracts, Staking Contract Factory, and Staking Rewards System contracts. Details on these contracts can be found in sections “On-chain elements”, “Staking contracts”, “Compatible Staking Contract Configuration”, “Staking Contracts Factory”, “Staking reward system”, and “Reward System Contracts Architecture” of the Olas Staking & Proof of Active Agent whitepaper

Information on the off-chain components and their integration with smart contracts can be found in sections “Off-chain elements” and “Combination of off-chain and on-chain elements for active agent verification” of the Olas Staking & Proof of Active Agent whitepaper

Rationale

The Olas Staking Mechanism addresses the need for a decentralized, incentive-driven framework within the Olas ecosystem to bootstrap agent economies. The proposal outlines how the current design of the mechanism extends the Olas Protocol. Furthermore, it mentions specific implementations for Trader and Market Creator agents in the Olas Predict economy, showcasing the versatility and adaptability of the staking mechanism.

Security Considerations

The Olas staking smart contracts follow the standard Olas security practices: an upgrade-safe minimal-proxy pattern (each staking instance is a StakingProxy cloned by the StakingFactory), a StakingVerifier that whitelists which staking implementations and parameter ranges the factory may deploy, reentrancy locks, and the Checks-Effects-Interactions pattern.

The contracts have undergone external audits by Code4rena (2024-05 and 2026-01) as well as a continuous series of internal audits. Findings are tracked and addressed in the autonolas-registries repository.

Test Cases

The staking contracts are covered by an extensive test suite in the autonolas-registries repository, combining Hardhat tests (test/ServiceStaking.js, test/ServiceStakingFactory.js) with Foundry unit, fuzz, coverage, and security-regression tests (StakingFuzz.t.sol, StakingBaseCoverage.t.sol, StakingSecurityFixes.t.sol, StakingDerivativeReentrancy.t.sol, ServiceStaking.t.sol, ServiceStakingGasLimit.t.sol). They are run with npx hardhat test and forge test --match-contract Staking -vvv.

Implementation

The Olas staking mechanism is implemented across two repositories:

  • Staking contracts — autonolas-registries, under contracts/staking/: StakingBase (core staking logic), StakingNativeToken and StakingToken (native-token and ERC20-token deposit variants), StakingFactory (deploys staking instances), StakingProxy (per-instance proxy), StakingVerifier (implementation and parameter whitelist), and StakingActivityChecker (service activity verification).
  • Reward distribution — autonolas-tokenomics: the Dispenser distributes the OLAS staking incentives computed by Tokenomics each epoch, routing them cross-chain to staking contracts on supported networks via per-chain deposit processors and target dispensers.

Next Step

The following steps have been done:

The following next step is planned:

  • Deploy the new staking contract implementation that adds a configurable reward-distribution model — staking rewards can be directed to the service owner, split equally between the service owner and the agent operator(s), sent to the service multisig, or follow a custom split. This new implementation was externally audited as part of the Code4rena 2026-01 audit but is not yet deployed; deployment will be followed by a governance vote for its adoption by the DAO.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

[^1] See the Olas (Autonolas) whitepaper for more information on veOLAS.